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European Journal of Physics

Approaching Bose–Einstein condensation

L. Ferrari

Published Oct 4, 2011• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) is discussed at the level of an advanced course of statistical thermodynamics, clarifying some formal and physical aspects that are usually not covered by the standard pedagogical literature. The non-conventional approach adopted starts by showing that the continuum limit, in certain cases, cancels out the crucial role of the bosonic ground level. If so, a correct treatment of the problem, including the ground level population N 0 by construction, leads to BEC in a straightforward way. For a density of states of the form G ( )∝ γ , the chemical potential µ is explicitly calculated as a function of the temperature T and of the number N of bosons, for various significant values of the positive exponent γ. In the thermodynamic limit, in which the boson number N diverges and BEC is a sharp process, the chemical potential µ is a singular function of T at the critical temperature T B , determined by an appropriate critical exponent. The condensate population N 0 is studied analytically and numerically as a function of the temperature, for various values of N and for different γ. This provides an accurate description of the way BEC approaches the character of a sharp phase transition. Some aspects of the real experiments on BEC, involving a finite number of bosons, are also illustrated.

DOI
10.1088/0143-0807/32/6/009

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Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) is discussed at the level of an advanced course of statistical thermodynamics, clarifying some formal and physical aspects that are usually not covered by the standard pedagogical literature. The non-conventional approach adopted starts by showing that the continuum limit, in certain cases, cancels out the crucial role of the bosonic ground level. If so, a correct treatment of the problem, including the ground level population N 0 by construction, leads to BEC in a straightforward way. For a density of states of the form G ( )∝ γ , the chemical potential µ is explicitly calculated as a function of the temperature T and of the number N of bosons, for various significant values of the positive exponent γ. In the thermodynamic limit, in which the boson number N diverges and BEC is a sharp process, the chemical potential µ is a singular function of T at the critical temperature T B , determined by an appropriate critical exponent. The condensate population N 0 is studied analytically and numerically as a function of the temperature, for various values of N and for different γ. This provides an accurate description of the way BEC approaches the character of a sharp phase transition. Some aspects of the real experiments on BEC, involving a finite number of bosons, are also illustrated.
The problem of understanding how a coherent, macroscopic Bose- Einstein condensate (BEC) emerges from the cooling of a thermal Bose gas has attracted significant theoretical and experimental interest over several decades. The pioneering achievement of BEC in weakly interacting dilute atomic gases in 1995 was followed by a number of experimental studies examining the growth of the BEC number, as well as the development of its coherence. More recently, there has been interest in connecting such experiments to universal aspects of nonequilibrium phase transitions, in terms of both static and dynamical critical exponents. Here, the spontaneous formation of topological structures such as vortices and solitons in quenched cold-atom experiments has enabled the verification of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicting the density of topological defects in continuous phase transitions, first proposed in the context of the evolution of the early universe. This chapter reviews progress in the understanding of BEC formation and discusses open questions and future research directions in the dynamics of phase transitions in quantum gases. Introduction The equilibrium phase diagram of the dilute Bose gas exhibits a continuous phase transition between condensed and noncondensed phases. The order parameter characteristic of the condensed phase vanishes above some critical temperature T c and grows continuously with decreasing temperature below this critical point. However, the dynamical process of condensate formation has proved to be a challenging phenomenon to address both theoretically and experimentally. This formation process is a crucial aspect of Bose systems and of direct relevance to all condensates discussed in this book, despite their evident system-specific properties. Important questions leading to intense discussions in the early literature include the time scale for condensate formation and the role of inhomogeneities and finite-size effects in “closed” systems. These issues are related to the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking, its causes, and implications for physical systems (see, for example, Chapter 5 by Snoke and Daley). In this chapter, we give an overview of the dynamics of condensate formation and describe the present understanding provided by increasingly well-controlled cold-atom experiments and corresponding theoretical advances over the past twenty years. We focus on the growth of BECs in cooled Bose gases, which, from a theoretical standpoint, requires a suitable nonequilibrium formalism.
Ideal Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) remains a paradigmatic example of a continuous phase transition and a cornerstone for understanding quantum degenerate bosonic matter. We demonstrate that critical behavior of the ideal Bose gas near the BEC phase transition falls into three distinct classes, determined exclusively by the low-energy scaling of the density of states. Depending on its scaling exponent, which is controlled by dimensionality and confinement, the transition displays either the usual algebraic divergences of thermodynamic susceptibilities, divergent behavior with marginal logarithmic corrections, or a more subtle form of criticality, where only the correlation length diverges. Our work provides a unified framework for criticality in noninteracting bosonic systems. This classification applies broadly to atomic, photonic, polaritonic, and magnonic condensates, where dimensionality, confinement, and spectral engineering can strongly reshape the density of states.
The theoretical description of non-equilibrium Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is one of the main challenges in modern statistical physics and kinetics. The non-equilibrium nature of BEC makes it impossible to employ the well-established formalism of statistical mechanics. We develop a framework for the analytical description of a non-equilibrium phase transition to BEC that, in contrast to previously developed approaches, takes into account the infinite number of continuously distributed states. We consider the limit of fast thermalization and obtain an analytical expression for the full density matrix of a non-equilibrium ideal BEC which also covers the equilibrium case. For the particular cases of 2D and 3D, we investigate the non-equilibrium formation of BEC by finding the temperature dependence of the ground state occupation and second-order coherence function. We show that for a given pumping rate, the macroscopic occupation of the ground state and buildup of coherence may occur at different temperatures. Moreover, the buildup of coherence strongly depends on the pumping scheme. We also investigate the condensate linewidth and show that the Schawlow–Townes law holds for BEC in 3D and does not hold for BEC in 2D.
The thermodynamic approach to density-functional theory (DFT) is used to derive a versatile theoretical framework for the treatment of finite-temperature (and in the limit, zero-temperature) Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). The simplest application of this framework, using the overall density of bosons alone, would yield the DFT of Nunes [J. Phys. B 32, 4293 (1999)]. It is argued that a significant improvement in accuracy may be obtained by using additional density fields: the condensate amplitude and the anomalous density. Thus, two advanced schemes are suggested, one corresponding to a generalized two-fluid model of condensate systems, and another scheme, which explicitly accounts for anomalous density contributions and anomalous effective potentials. The latter reduces to the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approach in the limit of weak interactions. For stronger interactions, a local-density approximation is suggested, but its implementation requires accurate data for the thermodynamic properties of uniform interacting BEC systems, including fictitious perturbed states of such systems. Provided that such data become available (e.g., from quantum Monte Carlo computation), DFT can be used to obtain high-accuracy theoretical results for the equilibrium states of BECs of various geometries and external potentials.
The theoretical description of non-equilibrium Bose--Einstein condensate (BEC) is one of the main challenges in modern statistical physics and kinetics. The non-equilibrium nature of BEC makes it impossible to employ the well-established formalism of statistical mechanics. We develop a framework for the analytical description of a non-equilibrium phase transition to BEC that, in contrast to previously developed approaches, takes into account the infinite number of the states. We consider the limit of fast thermalization and obtain an analytical expression for the full density matrix of a non-equilibrium BEC which also covers the equilibrium case. For the particular cases of 2D and 3D, we investigate the non-equilibrium formation of BEC by finding the temperature dependence of the ground state occupation and second-order coherence function. We show that for a given pumping rate, the macroscopic occupation of the ground state and buildup of coherence occur at different temperatures. Moreover, the buildup of coherence strongly depends on the pumping scheme. We also investigate the condensate linewidth and show that the Schawlow--Townes law holds for BEC in 3D and does not hold for BEC in 2D.
This paper presents a study of the grand canonical Bose-Einstein (BE) statistics for a finite number of particles in an arbitrary quantum system. The thermodynamical quantities that identify BE condensation---namely, the fraction of particles in the ground state and the specific heat---are calculated here exactly in terms of temperature and fugacity. These calculations are complemented by a numerical calculation of fugacity in terms of the number of particles, without taking the thermodynamic limit. The main advantage of this approach is that it does not rely on approximations made in the vicinity of the usually defined critical temperature, rather it makes calculations with arbitrary precision possible, irrespective of temperature. Graphs for the calculated thermodynamical quantities are presented in comparison to the results previously obtained in the thermodynamic limit. In particular, it is observed that for the gas trapped in a three-dimensional box, the derivative of specific heat reaches smaller values than what was expected in the thermodynamic limit---here, this result is also verified with analytical calculations. This is an important result for understanding the role of the thermodynamic limit in phase transitions and makes possible to further study BE statistics without relying neither on the thermodynamic limit nor on approximations near critical temperature.